


Third, or Possibly Fifth, Wheels

by ljs



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Post-Movie(s), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4741232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The evening after a successful mission in Cannes, Illya and Gaby wonder if Solo feels like a third wheel. Or, possibly, fifth wheel. English is stupid language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third, or Possibly Fifth, Wheels

The soft evening breeze wafts in through the open windows of Illya and Gaby’s hotel room, bringing with it the smell of the sea and the night-sounds of the Promenade de la Croisette. It has been a difficult mission and a very long day, but both are done now.

The tangled bedsheets and the open bottle of vodka (one glass only; Gaby’s) are silent testimony to the triumphant celebration of Kuryakin and Teller. Now, they are stretched out in bed. Gaby is reading a British motoring magazine and making notes in the margins; although he’s holding a letter, Illya is gazing absently at the curtains stirring in the breeze.

Gaby glances at him, sees the iron in his jaw, and sighs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He pats her thigh, long fingers curving around and below, and she shifts closer. But he withdraws his hand and goes back to absent gazing.

This inattention is of course unacceptable. Gaby marks her place, puts the magazine on her nightstand, and pounces.

Illya takes her assault with good grace: he’s perfectly used to random attacks by now. He makes only a small pained sound on impact and then lifts her so that she’s astride him, her hands on his shoulders. “You wish for more, my girl?” he says softly.

“Yes, but not now.” She retrieves the letter he’d been holding and surveys it. “Lady Margaret. She has made a move you cannot counter?”

“No.” Illya almost-smiles. “She is good, but not that good.”

Gaby carefully puts the letter on his nightstand. She knows how much he treasures the ongoing chess-by-mail match he has with Waverly’s aunt – perhaps because of the challenge of using only UNCLE-approved mail options, perhaps because it makes him feel more connected in this Western world. Then she lays herself down on his broad chest and says, “Tell me what’s wrong, my boy.”

“So sweet, chop shop girl,” he says, as his arms come around her. They lie there for a moment, listening to each other’s breath, his right hand tracing her spine. Then, before she can pinch him or move her knee to one of his more sensitive areas, he says, “Do you think Cowboy feels like a third wheel sometimes?”

“Third wheel?” she says.

“Is English expression. Something left over, someone left out.”

Gaby thinks of three-wheel Morgans – she worked on one of the little cars during a London mission last spring. “Nothing wrong with a third-wheel vehicle.”

“No, that is not the point.”

“A fifth wheel, now, that is useless.”

“Gaby.” Illya infuses her name with all the patience he can muster. “We agree that English is stupid language. Do you think Cowboy feels left out?”

“Because of us. Because of this.” She kisses his collarbone. Because he tastes so salty-sweet, she kisses down a little further, and is rewarded by his sinking down into the mattress with a husky little groan. So enjoyable to tease, her Illya. She kisses back up to his neck, and then his ear –

“Yes. Gabriella, answer my question,” he says as he gently but firmly holds her away from him.

She flutters her eyelashes, mock-coy. “Do you want him to join us here?”

“No.” The word is flat and uncompromising. “But I want him to be… okay.”

She reads the truth of that in his blue eyes. (He is so easy to read sometimes, or perhaps she’s getting better at deciphering his inscrutability.) She pushes back his sweat-darkened hair with her fingers. “So sweet, Illya.” Then, considering the question as seriously as she can: “Solo is… solo. It is a good name for him.”

“Point,” he says.

“But we might go check on him? In a friendly way?”

Illya almost smiles. “He has not found the trackers I put on all his belts in Tangier. Last I checked, he was in the bar.”

“Then we can wait a little to follow,” she says.

“Yes.” Without warning he flips her over, throws his leg over her, cages her head between his arms. “So, now?”

She shoves her hands in his hair to bring him closer. “Now. But fast.”  
………………………………………………

Solo finishes his champagne cocktail – he _is_ in Cannes, after all, the drink seems appropriate – and places the empty glass on the bar. He glances down to see a distorted version of himself in the polished surface, and smiles wryly.

Peril was right about this new tie, damn his Russian eyes. It doesn’t go well with the suit.

The pleasant hum of well-dressed people enjoying themselves in this hotel bar surrounds him. He’s feeling that itch between his shoulder blades again, however: an infallible sign he needs to move, needs to find another place to be. He’s used that itch to good effect in his various professions, and he might as well use it now.

Maybe a nightclub would be better before turning in. Some music, another cocktail, perhaps a lady to join him in bed, perhaps a bit of light thievery just to keep his hand in. Dance floors can be _so_ useful for that.

He stops and thanks the hostess of the bar on his way out, and asks for a recommendation for nightclubs close by. Pouting, she throatily suggests he might stay – with the clear implication that she will be available to him – and he’s almost tempted. But no. Obey the itch.

When he walks out onto the Promenade, he smells the sea. Wind is rustling the palm fronds overhead, and he remembers a long con he ran in southern California before the assembled forces of the law caught him. He’d cultivated a UCLA art-history grad student for pleasure and profit, and at the end of a long weekend together in a mid-century modern palace in Palm Springs, she had watched him dress for the last time. “You know, your name is ridiculously over-determined,” she said. “Obvious symbols are the worst.”

He smiles now at the thought – he’d gotten away with a couple of fine Renoirs from a retired movie star’s collection -- and at the memory of that pretty, naked woman dappled in evening palm shadows at the edge of a blue, blue pool. He likes his alone time. He likes to be in control of when he’s not alone.

The club the hostess had reluctantly recommended is only a few hundred feet away. He can hear the sharp French jazz before he’s even reached the door. It’s a good sign, he thinks, smiling at the bouncer, and gets a suggestive smile in return.

Maybe the tie’s not so wrong after all.

Once inside, it’s all smoke and soft lights and elegant debauchery, with plenty of attractive, extremely available women. Just what he was looking for – 

“Solo!” comes Waverly’s voice, and then there’s the boss, a beautifully turned out brunette of a certain age in hand. “Here to celebrate?”

Solo manages a smile. “Something like that.”

“Right, right,” Waverly says in his deceptively polite and bumbling way. He’s wearing an evening suit and a Patek Phillippe watch, the kind he doesn’t usually wear on duty – at least not when they’re chasing Algerian criminals who’re trying to sell a very important list of agents to some very bad people, as they’ve been doing the past week. “Have I introduced you to my, er, ex-wife? Helen, this is Napoleon Solo. Solo, Helen Waverly.”

The woman, who up close reveals Chinese as well as Anglo heritage, extends her arm. “Alexander, I am no longer using your name. I’ve told you this five, six hundred times now. Mr. Solo, I am very pleased to meet you. I am Helen Chan.”

As he shakes that narrow, strong hand, Solo keeps his cool, but only just. Helen Chan is a goddamn _legend_ amongst those who, it might be said, relieve the wealthy and well-connected of high-end goods. The score she made in Taiwan with the Faberge eggs fifteen years ago is still whispered about in awe. “Miss Chan,” he says. “An honor.”

Waverly grins, his eyes disconcertingly sharp. “Yes, Solo,” he says, “I do rather like surrounding myself with thieves. A personal failing.”

Miss Chan rests her hand on Waverly’s neck, possessive and intimate. “You are so very bad, Alexander.” He puts his arm around her waist, but says nothing.

It’s up to Solo to say, “How have you kept your security clearance, boss?”

“I have my ways,” Waverly says blandly. Then, to the hovering hostess, “Table, ma’am?”

“For three?” she says.

Waverly checks his watch. “Mmm. Let’s make it a bigger table, shall we? Just as a precaution.”

The three of them have just gotten their drinks – Waverly drinking coffee, as is his custom – when an enormous shadow falls across the table.

Solo sighs. He doesn’t even have to look. “Hello, Peril. Gaby.”

His partners, standing hand in hand, nod in unison. “You are enjoying yourself,” Gaby says, and looks meaningfully up at Illya.

“But I tell you, Cowboy, that is so much the wrong tie,” Illya says, ignoring her, at which Solo just grins.

“Good to see you,” Waverly says. 

“Your prediction was off by five minutes, darling,” Miss Chan says to him, just loud enough for Solo to hear.

“My chagrin cannot be adequately expressed,” Waverly says, deadpan, then, “Do join us, you two.”

“We do not want to intrude,” Illya says.

“Sit, sit,” Solo says. “It’s apparently that kind of night.”

Gaby sits next to him, Illya perching uneasily on the small chair at the end of the table. The five of them talk. (Much is made of Illya's ongoing chess match with Lady Margaret. Bets are placed on the winner.) The five of them drink. The five of them laugh. The five of them even dance: Gaby dragging Illya out for five minutes; Solo getting a turn with Miss Chan, who is even more amazing up close. Also he gets some wonderful dirt on Waverly, to be held against the next time Solo wants a little vacation.

Waverly has taken Miss Chan out on the dance floor, in fact, when Gaby puts her hand on Solo’s. She and Peril are gazing earnestly at him. “Are you okay? Illya—"

“We,” Peril interposes smoothly.

“All right, _we_ were just… wondering.”

“Okay?” Solo is feeling very loose and at home. Also, there’s a blonde two tables away who’s been giving him the eye for ten minutes, and he’s just about to pursue. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“It’s just,” Peril says, awkwardly, “we were wondering about third wheels. If you felt so.”

“Fifth wheels,” Gaby says. “It makes more sense.”

“English is stupid language,” they say together, and then turn to Solo and raise their eyebrows.

“I’m touched,” Solo says, and only as he says it does he realize that he’s not being sarcastic. He glances out at the dance floor, where the boss and Miss Chan are slow-dancing to a fast song, and then gazes at his partners. They _are_ his partners. His friends. He doesn’t usually have those.

He checks himself. No itch between his shoulder blades. He’s right where he needs to be.

“Thanks, Gaby, Peril,” he says with rare sincerity. “I am completely okay.”

His name is Solo, but he doesn’t have to be alone any more unless he wants to.


End file.
